


For Darkness Shows the Stars

by skittles_and_rain



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Attempted Suicide, Depression, Implied/Referenced Torture, Kidnapping, Lance is just Sad, M/M, Memoir, Panic Attacks, he's trying his best
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-12
Updated: 2017-08-12
Packaged: 2018-12-14 08:07:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11778927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skittles_and_rain/pseuds/skittles_and_rain
Summary: If you're listening to this, its probably too late.





	For Darkness Shows the Stars

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this right after I finished 13 reasons why aka it was induced by heavy depression but I had a super good beta so it shouldn't be that bad.

A man jumps down from his aircraft and runs toward a burning cargo ship, screaming for a person he hasn't seen in over a year. He scrambles through the wreckage, clutching onto a broken piece of hope he's held onto for as long as he can remember. This man is about to leave when he sees a hand fall from the top of the ship. He wrenches open a top compartment where another man like him falls, unconscious, skin blistering and burning.

 

Tears well up in his eyes and he automatically drags the other man out of the wreckage, beating down the fires on his skin and clothes. He tentatively turns the face towards him and chokes on air he didn't realize he'd been holding in. He breathes out the man's name in short breaths and starts crying harder, head falling onto the other man's chest.

 

After he calms down he begins searching the body, still unconscious, and is about to give up on any evidence of his condition when he notices a silver piece of equipment in his hand. He reaches over and tugs it out of the mans grasp and turns the device around in his hand before his eyes widen. He knew what this was. It was a voice recorder. He looked over at the man before shaking his head and pressing play, wondering what was on this that caused the man to let it burn with him.

 

He doesn't know that when he presses that button his heart will be crushed and dusted away like particles in the wind. He doesn't know, but he listens anyways.

 

_This is a memoir._

 

_A memoir to me, because I'm a narcissist. I'm recording this so you'll know what happened to me, even if no one else does. I want whatever bullshit legacy I have to make it off this desolate planet I'm stranded on; ‘hope that's okay with you._

 

_To start this off… I'm not scared to say that I made the wrong decision, not at all, I'm just scared to say when._

 

_It could have started when I trusted some of my friends to do something we had no idea how to handle, or how to control. It could have started when we were assigned roles in a battle we had no idea how to fight, in a game we had no idea how to play. It was a game of war, except if you lost, you died. It could have been after our first win, the blood rushing through my veins and the adrenaline still thumping around my brain, telling me to do more._

 

_Or maybe it could have been the first time I realized so much had gone wrong, after so much had taken place and so much time had passed, the first time I openly missed home._

 

_Or maybe it could have been after one of our own was lost to us, switching everyone's roles._

 

_But it couldn't have been what happened right after that, could it? Everything went so well after that. We all learned so much, we had already been through so much together._

 

_That's what happens after you've reached the limit of ‘bad’ that can happen to you. Some good comes along, only to have it ripped away again so more ‘bad’ can raise your limit._

 

_That's what happened to me. I reached my limit, I broke down, I stopped holding everyone together, but I was lifted back up by him and he became my will and my spirit. The fire in my heart was fueled by him._

 

_Then it was ripped from me._

 

_Maybe that's where I went wrong, after all. I shouldn't have been lifted up after my limit broke me down. I shouldn't have been this happy._

 

_That's what caused this, isn't it?  That's what caused all this pain. All this pain…_

 

_Maybe I should start over. Yes. Okay. Back to the beginning. No not the very beginning but… This beginning. The beginning of the end._

 

_\-------_

 

_I guess I should formally introduce myself now, to make things clearer for you. My name is (was?) Lance McClain and I am (was?) a Paladin of Voltron, the Blue Paladin to be exact, excluding the few months where me and Red had our time. But that was before I defended the universe with my friends as the Paladins of Voltron, the most powerful weapon in the universe. I guess you should know them too if this is gonna work. Is this working? I'm not very good at memoirs._

 

_Anyways, to start this off you should know Hunk. He's my best friend and the other leg, like me. He's the Paladin of the yellow lion and he’s a big goofball who likes to cook and give the Space Mice baths. He's very level headed and has been my voice of reason on multiple occasions. I just hope that wherever he is, he isn't worrying about me. I hope he's happy. I hope they all are._

 

_Well, anyways, sorry. Not meaning to be depressing, that's for later. So, let's continue onto Pidge (AKA Katie Holt but what do you care?). She's the green Paladin which obviously means she pilots the green lion if you haven't caught onto that yet. She's also the resident hacker of our group and one of the smartest people I've ever met. She's been on a man hunt for years for her brother, who she just found recently, but I guess you don't really care about that either._

 

_Next comes Shiro, he's the leader of our group and the Black Paladin, which, if you're following along, means he pilots the black lion. He and my… He's brothers to one of the other guys in our group and happens to also be dating Pidges brother. Haha, would you have guessed? Yeah, us neither. Like me, he was once a Galra prisoner. He was imprisoned for years and now has this super cool mecha arm, but that's not really important. We haven't gotten to important to yet._

 

_Other than the Paladins there's also this pretty princess that drives us around in her castle and orders us to ‘Form Voltron!’ a lot. She and her royal advisor Coran are both aliens which is pretty neat. They're Alteans from planet -get this- Altea. Super original, right? Anyway they're, like, the ones in charge of all of us, so they're pretty important too._

 

_But, you may be thinking, weren't there five Paladins of Voltron? Well, you're right. There were five._

 

_This last one… He's important. No one is as important to me as he is, and I doubt anyone will ever be. He was.. Well I guess I've talked about him a little. He's the one I mentioned that helped fix me once before. But I don't think he can fix me this time…. No one can._

 

_His name is Keith Kogane and he is the Red Paladin of Voltron, and I'll just let you guess which lion he flies… And oh god, does he fly. You've never seen beauty until you've seen the smile on his face after he's been on a flight with Red (aw I gave away his lion, didn't I?). God… He's so.. I'm sorry. I'm sorry; I didn't want to cry I'm not.. Hold on._

 

The recorder goes silent for a few beats and Keith breaks down, full out sobbing into his arms. Oh Lance… What happened to you? He thinks before shuffling comes from the recorder and he fumbles to hold it back up to his ear so he could hear more.

 

_I'm sorry I'm composed… For now. But, Keith, Voltron resident emo child and.... the light of my life. Keith is… Well, Keith is impulsive and loud and chronically angry, but he's also so much more. He's soft and compassionate and even though he's emotionally constipated, he's made me feel more loved than anyone ever has. God I hope I made him feel that way too._

 

_Well Keith, he's also one of the main characters of this story. He's my beginning, my middle, but he's not my end. And I'm happy for that. I'm happy he can't see me like I am right now, bleeding on a desolate planet, eating berries that take away the feeling from all your nerves, and recording the last year or so of my life on a little silver recorder._

 

_Anyways, gosh I say that a lot, but whatever, I said I would start from the beginning, didn't I? Well here I am. The beginning. And the beginning starts with him, Keith Kogane, resident half-Galra emo child and, at the time, my longest crush to date._

 

_I don't remember how the day really started if we're being completely honest here, but I know how it ended. It ended with me and Keith sitting on top of Blue, gazing at the stars above us on some planet we had just freed. We hardly kept track anymore, there's no point._

 

_That night ended somehow with Keith leaning over to me and grabbing my hand, telling me… Oh, okay. I remember now._

 

_Okay, listen up kids ‘cause this is the start of a pattern, and not a good one. We were gazing at the universe above us when I asked him if he ever felt lonely. He said of course he did, but he had us, the Paladins, so why dwell on it? A little loneliness is a small sacrifice for the sake of the entire galaxy, he said._

 

_Now that was the appropriate answer, the answer a logical person would have given. But if you know anything about me, I'm not very logical. I'm a bit of a ditz. So I just shrugged and said I felt lonely all the time, like there was an empty space around me that I could never fill, that I hoped the war would end so I could go home._

 

_It seemed to me like just another one of my self depreciation episodes, I get them a lot you know, but to him it was more than that._

 

_He took my hands and forced me to look at him, telling me I didn't need to feel alone. He asked me if he could invade the empty space that shaped around my body and help me through this. I looked into his eyes (God, his eyes are so pretty) and I nodded._

 

_He pulled away and nodded back to me before muttering ‘fuck it’ and leaned into my personal space to grab my chin and tug me forward._

 

_And there it was, my first kiss, and more importantly my first kiss with Keith Kogane. It was soft and hard at the same time. His five o’clock shadow scratching my face as he slid closer, laying me down on top of Blue as one of his knees went between my legs. He pulled away for a moment and stared at me with a shit eating grin, like he'd just gotten away with murder._

 

_“You're so beautiful.” He whispered before practically assaulting me with his lips again._

 

_The rest is history and I won't bore you with the juicy details, but when we walked out of the hangar later that night we were holding hands and I officially had a boyfriend._

 

_That's where it all started. On the top of some giant cats on some random planet looking at some random stars. That's what started the best times of my life, and the worst._

 

_Keith… He was the good parts. He was the ice cream on a hot day and the cool breeze over the ocean, the ocean I missed so much. He was the glue that kept my broken pieces together, and he had to reapply that glue a lot. We laughed together, we cried together, we fought together, we loved together._

 

_And man did we love. I loved -I love- that man more than anything I've ever loved. And I hope he felt the same way. Whenever he held me at night, it felt like I was wrapped in warmth, like I was back in my bed under a blanket, like I was home. He was my home._

 

_Then that was ripped away._

 

_You see, happiness doesn't last forever. Especially not for me. I already told you, me and Keith fought, but it got more frequent before I disappeared. It was practically every day that we'd fight, but I'd always have arms to still crawl into at night._

 

_Except that was… It was too much. He was too much for me. I always began feeling like I wasn't worth being a Paladin, that Blue had chosen wrong, that this wasn't worth it. It was the cause of most of our fights and one day I just… I broke. The glue didn't work anymore._

 

_It was the day everything was torn away from me, where my limit learned to grow, where the ‘bad’ came back and the pain became a permanent resting place in my mind and in my body._

 

_I had just gotten back with Hunk from some diplomatic meeting and I'd puked in the bathroom after we arrived back, so overwhelmed by everything that I broke into a cold sweat and had a panic attack._

 

_Keith came to ask if I was okay but I told him to leave me the fuck alone and that he wasn't helping. He asked me again, what was wrong. I told him, again, to fuck off. When I looked back at him he just looked so sad. Then he just turned around and left. He did what I asked but I wanted him to come back. Couldn't he see that I wanted him to stay? That I was lying? I guess he didn't._

 

_I said his name, almost like a soft prayer on my lips. I stood up and wiped my face before putting back on my helmet and walking to the hangars. I walked straight past Pidge and to Blue, who sensed my sadness and let me in._

 

_Looking back at it now, I wish she had just shut me out and not let me fly her away. Then none of this would've happened._

 

_But it did. It happened._

 

_So when I left the hangar in Blue, I hadn't intended to follow a tracking on a Galra ship. I just needed to clear my head. Then I saw that red dot and just… the next thing I knew I was being launched out into open space and screaming at Blue to get back to the castle._

 

_Then I was ambushed at all sides, being shot with lasers upon lasers. My gear sizzled with the heat and I can still feel myself burning up at the thought of it._

 

_I remember screaming Keith's name before I was dragged onto a Galra ship and knocked out, Blue flying off in the distance._

 

_Now… I won't give you the gory details on what happened because I don't want you going through what I did. But I'll tell you enough._

 

_To put it bluntly, I was tortured for information for about 11 months, give or take. I had stopped talking about 3 months in and had stopped reacting to pain at about 6._

 

_I used to say it takes a lot to break me, but looking back on it now, it really doesn't. At all._

 

_I was the druids pet for weeks, used as an errand boy and had experiments done on me day in and day out. I was put through all kinds of torture to get information from me, they even tried to wire my brain to get me to give up everything I knew, but nothing ever worked. I guess I didn't really know anything._

 

_I never saw or heard from my friends again, from Keith again. I figured they all died while I was in captivity, until one day a guard fell asleep at his station by my door and I was able to get his key and sneak out. It sounds a lot easier than it actually was to get off that ship and end up here, but it wasn't. I had a smooth run for about 10 minutes, by pass if all those stupid droid guards until I spotted some Galra generals and gave myself up. I'd stopped so that hopefully they would move along like everyone else had, letting me get pass them to the hangars, but it didn't really end up that way.  I'd stood there for minutes upon minutes, listening to them whine about how much they hated their job, and I was about to turn away and find another route when I heard them start talking about Voltron. They said it had recently emerged again and was taking out bases one by one across the galaxy, finally fighting back again at the Galra Empire. I didn't mean to bus I gasped at this knowledge, giving away my hiding spot._

 

_As you can guess I was caught and shot at, in the leg actually. Now I've been starved for almost a year with only the minimum food to suffice so I knew I was skinny, but I didn't think that would affect my running so bad. But before I knew it, I was lying on the ground screaming in agony, soldiers only a few paces behind me._

 

_I was so scared, I didn't know what to do, but I saw I had stumbled into the cargo bay, so I hobbled as fast as I could into a cargo plane and ended up flying off that damn ship onto some planet that's only inhabitants were weird slugs that smelt like burnt popcorn._

 

_My wound hurt, it still does. It's only been a week since then and I've been surviving off of numbing berries and green water ever since._

 

_But there's bad news, my ship is wrecked and my wound is infected. So either I die of a bacterial infection in my leg or in my… Insides… From that stupid green water._

 

_I didn't really wanna dwell on either option, so I went searching and found this recorder thing in the hatch above the pilot's chair, which gave me a third option. Sure they all involve death, but at least this one tells a story. The story of a boy who fell in love, hurt himself inside and out, and finally gave up._

 

_Yep, you heard it. That's why this was being taped. I give up. I'm gonna eat about 30 of those berries and once my senses are numb I'm gonna climb into a cabinet in the ship and set the whole damn thing ablaze._

 

_Yep, I'm gonna die. But that's okay, ‘cause I'm ready to die. At least I was able to make this stupid recording. I really just needed all that off my chest, even though there are still a lot of holes in the story._

 

_Or maybe… Maybe there will be no one. Yeah. Yeah, maybe that will be better. I'll just set everything of mine ablaze and let it all go up in smoke. Thats a great idea… Yeah._

 

Keith can't believe what he was hearing. He looks over at the burning ship and lets out another sob. That's why Lance had been in there... He was trying to… He was going to... Oh god.

 

_Well that's all I have, sorry nobody got to listen to this, but I guess that's for the better. Everyone I know has probably forgotten about me already, so it's best not to dig up old skeletons._

 

_So I guess this is goodbye. I'm gonna go eat those berries and I guess I'll set myself on fire? I don't know, that seems like a pretty poetic way to die._

 

_So this is Lance, ex Blue Paladin and full time pain experiencer, signing off._

 

It goes silent. Keith thinks that’s it and he almost sets it down before the voice pipes back up for one more line.

 

_Oh, and if you see my Mullet Man, tell him I loved him, but fuck, he needs a haircut. Haha._

 

And that really was it. There’s a click and the tape goes quiet. Keith reaches back to feel the short hair at the nape of his neck. He'd cut it shortly after Lance disappeared because it hurt to look at the hair Lance spent so much time making fun of. He'd kept it short ever since. It was only one of the things that had changed since Lance was taken.

 

Keith looks down at his boyfriend, covered in burns and wearing ratty old clothes. But if he looks close enough, he can still see the brown tint to his skin and the scar above his eyebrow, among many new ones.

 

He runs his fingers over Lance's skin until he feels the body underneath him warm up slightly. He narrows his eyes and looks up at Lance, who was blinking awake.

 

He looks at Keith. Then looks at the wreckage. Then finally once more, back at Keith.

 

Keith doesn't know what to say so he holds up the tape. “We uh.. We sensed the radio signal this thing came from and decided to check it out, ‘cause this planet is supposed to be abandoned.”

 

Lance just stares at him, mouth parted slightly, eyes glistening.

 

Keith looks down at his lap before a tear falls onto his hands and he looks back at Lance, throwing himself on top of him.

 

“Lance!” He practically screams as he hugs the other boy tightly. They sit like that for what feels like hours, but time doesn't matter to them. Nothing did but each other.

 

Keith eventually peels himself off of Lance and wipes his eyes. “God, I love you so much.” He says, voice still cracked.

 

Lance eventually meets his eyes and smiles for the first time in what felt like years. “I love you too, mullet.” He says.

 

Keith groans low and smirks at Lance, touching his hair. “Guess I'm not the one with a mullet, now am I?” He asks Lance, playing with the strands of the other man's hair.

 

Lance shakes his head and sighs, falling into Keith's open arms and suddenly begins crying, overcome with joy, a feeling he never thought he'd feel again.

 

“No, I guess you're not.”

 

Keith smiles at him again before he stands up, holding out a hand to Lance. One he takes it he pulls him up and kisses him softly, he can still taste the salt from their tears but at that moment he doesn't care.

 

He pulls away and looks toward where Blue sits, patiently waiting, about 100 meters away.

 

“Let's go home.” He says and Lance nods.

 

They walk away, leaving it all behind them, the fire still burning bright and the recorder still sitting on the ground, where it would stay until the next person picks it up.

 

When the next person does picks it up, they'll think it was a lie, because they knew Lance of Voltron. He was a hero, and he didn't die in some fire, he lived on and defeated the Empire with the other Paladins.

 

They will think it’s fake, all of it, until they take a look at the burnt remains of a ship and see berries still in a nice pile only feet away.

  
But they'll smile, because they know it all turned out for the best. In the end, Lance McClain, Blue Paladin of Voltron, lived on. He became what he always wanted to be: happy.


End file.
